Boston bombings test post-9/11 confidence

The Boston Marathon bombing left Americans feeling more vulnerable to terrorism than they’ve felt since the Sept. 11 attacks. And it’s left politicians preparing for Americans to ask again what government can and should do to prevent acts of terrorism.

After more than a decade during which Americans came to feel increasingly complacent, President Barack Obama, federal officials and local officials face the same problem, no matter who is ultimately deemed to have planted the bombs: how to convince people that the explosions Monday after a decade of relative quiet are evidence of a system that’s working, and not one that fell apart.

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Obama: Attacks were 'cowardly'

Pols, pundits debate 'terror' label

Americans are shaken, and looking for answers to questions they’ve gotten used to not even asking.

“Many Americans have come to expect near perfection — and we have almost had it,” former National Counterterrorism Center director Michael Leiter said Tuesday. “Boston will undoubtedly remind Americans that we remain vulnerable, even if remarkably less vulnerable than we were in 2001.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) argued that before Monday Americans had returned to a pre-2001 mentality, and now they’re being snapped back.

“With the passage of time … and the vigilant efforts of our military, intelligence and law enforcement professionals, I think it’s safe to say that for many, the complacency that prevailed prior to Sept. 11 has actually returned,” McConnell declared in Senate floor speech Tuesday.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she expects the marathon bombing to remind Americans that the threat of terrorism has not disappeared.

“Because our intelligence community has been successful in thwarting many plots against our country since the attacks in September 2011, I believe that a lot of Americans have grown more complacent about the threat,” Collins said. “This is a horrific reminder that the threat of terrorism is still very real and there are those who are determined to harm innocent Americans using horrific means.”

Former House Intelligence Committee member Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said the scale and style of the Boston attacks — using relatively small explosive devices hidden in a crowd— illustrates the impossibility of achieving complete security against terrorists.

“In this case, perfection is not an option. There’s no possible way to find every pipe bomb planted by some deranged person at mass events,” said Harman, now president of the Woodrow Wilson Center. “There is no such thing as 100 percent security.”

However unwise, that expectation of perfect safety had become a staple of American politics in recent years, at least with regard to attacks by the group that carried out the Sept. 11 attacks: Al Qaeda.

To some extent, Obama fueled that notion by repeatedly promising to stop at nothing to prevent terrorism — a vow he made often after Republicans accused him of being weak on terrorism early in his first term.

”We will continue to do everything that we can to keep America safe,” he said after the attempted bombing of a Delta airliner in the skies over Detroit in 2009.

Security professionals prefer to talk about risk management, as well as trade-offs involving privacy, security and economic imperatives like keeping airports, ports and borders moving. But Harman said American politicians have had trouble talking in terms that acknowledge some terrorist attacks will succeed.

“If you’re an elected official, [complete safety] is a promise you want to make, but it’s not a promise you can keep,” she said. “The goal is to manage risk, and we have done that extremely well.”

Still, if the Boston blasts are ultimately tied to Al Qaeda or a related group overseas, the U.S. intelligence community and the Obama administration will come under immense pressure to explain how the plots were missed.

“It’s a very big deal” if the attack is traced to Al Qaeda, Harman said. “If there’s clear connection to a known terror group abroad, I think that based on what the president said last night, we will ratchet up the consequences.”

Leiter said he doubts the attacks were directed by Al Qaeda, but that if they were, they could unleash a round of second-guessing that he and others have warned about for years.

“Any failure … can result in political finger-pointing and excoriation of our counterterrorism professionals,” he told the House in testimony earlier this year. “We have become victims of our own success.”

“If it does prove to be Al Qaeda, I think there will be greater questions about how and why we appear to have had limited or no warning,” the former terrorism official added Tuesday.